The endogenous nature of the measurement of social preferences
John Smith
Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences, 2012, vol. 11, issue 2, 235-256
Abstract:
We present evidence against the standard assumptions that social preferences are stable and can be measured in a reliable, nonintrusive manner. We find evidence that measures of social preferences can affect subsequent behavior. Researchers often measure social preferences by posing dictator type allocation decisions. The social value orientation (SVO) is a particular sequence of dictator decisions. We vary the order in which the SVO and a larger stakes dictator game are presented. We also vary the form of the dictator game. In one study, we employ the standard dictator game, and in the other, we employ a nonstandard dictator game. With the standard dictator game, we find that prosocial subjects act even more prosocially when the SVO is administered first, whereas selfish subjects are unaffected by the order. With the nonstandard dictator game, we find evidence across all subjects that those who first receive the SVO are more generous in the dictator game but we do not find the effect among only the generous subjects. Across both dictator game forms, we find evidence that the subjects who are first given the SVO were more generous than subjects who are given the SVO last. We also find that this effect is stronger among the subjects with a perfectly consistent SVO measure. Although we cannot determine whether the order affects preferences or the measure of preferences, our results are incompatible with the assumptions that social preferences are stable and can be measured in a reliable, nonintrusive manner. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012
Keywords: Experimental economics; Altruism; Dictator game; Social value orientation; Order effects; C91; D64; Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)
Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11299-012-0110-4 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
Working Paper: The endogenous nature of the measurement of social preferences (2010) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:minsoc:v:11:y:2012:i:2:p:235-256
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11299
DOI: 10.1007/s11299-012-0110-4
Access Statistics for this article
Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences is currently edited by Riccardo Viale
More articles in Mind & Society: Cognitive Studies in Economics and Social Sciences from Springer, Fondazione Rosselli Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().